


The very thing and nothing else

by Asimiento



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-03
Updated: 2016-01-08
Packaged: 2018-05-11 07:47:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5619178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asimiento/pseuds/Asimiento
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finn’s new life is marked by discoveries. A recovery charted in nature walks, intergalactic transmissions, fancy tours, and strange vistas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published as individual pieces on tumblr, in bursts, throughout December 2015. (Save for a short interlude.) The individual pieces were dedicated to several people who wanted several isolated things that all somehow, inexplicably, tied together. Is the package neatly tied? You tell me, reader. You tell me. I'm just trying my best.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You have navigated with raging soul  
>  far from the paternal home,  
>  passing beyond the sea's double rocks,  
>  and you now inhabit a foreign land."  
>  — Euripedes, Medea

A low, thrumming hiss. Curls of white smoke. An infinitely black expanse. Starlight.

A hydraulic barrier pulls up from the Finalizer’s cargo bay, exposing the dark of space behind. Captain Phasma drags a bloodied Resistance rebel by the neck, dangling him a hair’s breadth from the border. Slip—designation FN–2003—is given an order: toss the captive out. Eight-Seven—designation FN–2187—holds the tip of his blaster inches away from Slip’s spine. This is a test. Slip’s incompetence has derailed the First Order for the last time.

The stars beyond the border blink from parsecs and parsecs away.

Finn opens his eyes. It’s almost daytime.

He wakes up in the Resistance’s medical bay. A med droid torques its head, beeps once, blinks its small signal light, and hovers away. Time for a walk. As he pulls off the covers, a phantom sensation burns in his back. Seventeen days since regaining full mobility. Well, partially. Finn winces. He hauls himself up, and the droid comes back with a short metal crutch.

The air in D’Qar is crisp and cold. Stretches of green sprawl and sweep all the way to the distant horizon. Finn walks and walks, as far as he can manage. The tip of his crutch clicks against the smooth stone path. One, two, three. One, two, three. One, two, three. One, two, three.

The beat of the First Order’s measured march echoes somewhere in the back of his mind.

Finn focuses on the path. On the white stone. On the osiers swaying in the breeze. An eternal foliage. He rests under the shade of a willow tree, down by the river, its long, pliant branches dipping into the water. The med droid hovers a few meters away.

Sunlight streams in from behind the mountains. Beating drums. Synthetic white. His hand on a smooth trigger. His hands hauling a young man away, to be whisked off into the endless void.

He walks back to medical in time for physical therapy.

Recovery is slow, long, and painful.

Every week, he talks to Rey via holo-call. They talk, out of necessity, out of misery, out of yearning for a new things to fill the lacunary spaces once occupied by the lives they’ve left behind. Rey’s new life is, in a manner of speaking, forceful.

Rey hovers some pebbles using the Force, to entertain him. She talks about how she's always dreamed of living by the sea. Finn holds her static blue hand. She lets it linger a bit before pulling away. “Stop holding my hand,” Rey chides. Finn frowns. Rey laughs.

“I wish you could come here,” Rey says, softly.

The calls are always brief. His back feels heavier.

In truth, he barely needs the crutch now, but the med droid insists. One, two, three. One, two, three. Click, click, click. Every morning, he rests by the same tree. Every morning, he basks in the the breathtaking vistas of the natural world. Every morning, he hopes that little by little, the wild breeze carries the First Order away with it. From his conscious state, from his subconscious thought, every physical and psychological trace buffeted into the firmament.

He sits down and closes his eyes. A piece of fruit hits him in the head. His med droid beeps.

“Whoops, sorry about that,” someone calls from above.

Finn looks up and spots Poe Dameron crouched on one of the thicker branches. Poe leaps down and sits beside Finn. Finn shifts a little, rubs the stain off the fruit with the cuff of his sleeve, and hands it to Poe. Poe takes it with both hands, pries it half, and hands Finn a piece.

“Thanks.” Finn says.

“You come here often?” Poe asks, sounding amused in a way makes Finn feel more than a little self-conscious. Everything makes Finn feel a self-conscious, these days. Poe gives Finn a crooked smile and bites into his piece of fruit.

Finn shrugs. “Yes?” He responds. “I’ve been coming here every morning for a week now. Do you, uh, hang out on top of trees often?”

Poe laughs. His shoulder bumps against Finn’s. Finn bites into the fruit and his eyes grow wide. He hasn’t really had anything but synthetic rations from the First Order, and some grains and herbage from medical. This is new. It’s crisp and soft and sweet. It’s probably the second time he’s tasted anything sweet. Ever. In his entire life. It’s amazing.

“Wow.” Finn says in between chews. “This is amazing.” He sounds like a garbled mess. “What is it?"

“It’s drupe,” says Poe, amused and soft and suave all at once.

“Ah,” Finn replies. In a few days, he will learn about common crops in the Ileenium system, keen to learn more about the natural world, keen to distance himself as far as possible from the life he’s left behind. At this very moment, he has absolutely no clue what drupe is.

“You look good, Finn. Doing better?” Poe sounds hopeful.

Finn feels a little self-conscious. A little itchy. A little too conscious of every single pore on the back of his neck. He’s doing fine somatically, thanks, but he could be doing way better in the psyche department. He could be thinking about the First Order less, for one. He could be thinking about his former captors less, and focusing on his recovery more. Every time Finn closes his eyes, he feels the frigid air of the First Order. He sighs a long sigh. “Yeah,” he wheezes, a little unsure.

Poe catches on. He chews on his lower lip, makes an aborted attempt to speak, and settles for looking off, into the water. “It takes a while to adjust,” he says.

Finn looks out. A flotilla of birds fly overhead. The sun rises higher. The willow’s leaves sway. The air is warmer.

“Really, though, is this your thing? Do you hang out on treetops during your downtime?” Finn asks.

Poe smiles. “No. Just today,” he says, truthfully. He gives Finn a knowing look.

“So… you did know I was coming here.”

“You’re worrying a lot of people, Finn. The medics. The med droid. Even the General’s a little worried.” Poe claps a hand on Finn’s shoulder. “You’ve been quiet. How are you holding up?”

“I’ve been talking to Rey.” Finn says, defensively. His heels dig into the grass. He laughs, and it sounds heavy and bitter.

“You can talk to me too, if you’d like,” Poe says. His smile is soft. The concern in his tone is unmistakeable. Finn wants to feel vexed. He just feels tired.

The itching sensation resurfaces. The air feels warmer. There’s an itch in his back. He takes another bite of drupe. The sunlight streams through the trees, glowing coins in the water. Finn isn’t used to having friends. He smiles.

“Tell me about the moment you decided to cross over.” Poe says, quietly.

Finn talks. The First Order was cold in a way that now feels foreign yet familiar. It was overwhelming. It was glorious. Beauty and terror. Compelling, vast, eternally dark. An insidious hive mind. Great eyes looming overhead, always. In the First Order, life had purpose. Control. Your kin, a faceless squadron of comrades-in-arms. Every day, an unconscionable desolation.

“The day before our unit raided Jakku,” Finn says, “our assignment was to get rid of one of the captured rebels. Well, one of us. FN–2003. The comrades,” he gulps. “Uh, the other stormtroopers gave him a nickname. They used to call him Slip. He was always falling behind. I was always picking up after him.”

Finn frowns. He remembers pulling off his helmet in the Finalizer, seeing Slip’s blood streaked across the top. “Our C.O. had Slip throw a rebel off the ship. He, uh, couldn’t do it. It was unusual. Unnatural.”

Finn chooses his next words carefully. A confession, a plea of guilt, a finality at once fearsome and freeing. “I stepped in and pitched the rebel overboard. That night, I couldn’t sleep.” Finn closes his eyes. “Sometimes I forget I’m out,” he whispers.

A bird swoops down to the water. The wind whistles.

Poe rests a hand on Finn’s back, at the junction where the neck meets the shoulder. He shifts closer. “You’re here now,” he says.

Finn tilts his head to look straight at Poe, then tilts again to look afar. He considers the osiers swaying, the gentle tumble of the water, the mountain peaks in the horizon, the sun looming overhead. He considers the sharp, illustrious scene, and taking refuge somewhere by the edge of it all. Somewhere where the click of his feet do not break into a battle march. Somewhere where the cry of wildlife does not collapse into a clarion call. Somewhere where his pulse does not feel like the tick of a sputtering quartz hand, long, measured, and final.

The day is warm and bright, the sky blue and vast. X-Wings glide overhead and remind Finn of the unassailable truth: it is wartime, and the First Order is omnipresent.

He looks far and will his feet to run. Then, he turns to Poe.

“Something on your mind?” Poe asks.

Finn chooses his next words carefully. “It’s beautiful here,” he says.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finn catches up with Rey. Rey is a fruit ninja. Then, Finn catches up with Poe. Every morning, under the same tree.

The old stone lining the First Jedi Temple is cracked and graying. The sound of the current from outside hisses into the hall. A calm whisper. An upbraiding of sand and sea echoing through the intergalactic network—a low hum, a halcyonic tone. Finn hears it and feels at once close and distant to the shining blue mapped-out Rey data manifested before him.

Three hours, every four days, in a concave room, with a holographic Rey.

Rey speaks with lambent clarity. The Force is pure abstraction. A concurrent upwelling of synthesis and isolation.  It is immeasurable, invisible, extant yet inexplicable. Rey reaches for a feeling to call it, and the feeling she finds is _s_ _ _ublime_. Not unlike magic. Not unlike gravity. Not unlike the coursing life itself. _ Rey calls it immense, beautiful, and terrifying.

They talk about change. They talk about the different paths they’ve taken, the ways their lives have shifted since that first determined step away from their old worlds. It’s not until Rey talks about what she’s been learning, about the Force, about the history of the Jedi Order—its methodical structures, its conscription from infancy, its culture of asceticism and abstinence—that Finn realizes he’s heard it all before.

Transitions are uncomfortable. Recovery has been unpleasant. Unlearning a systematic, insuperable way of life is a veritable nightmare. Finn tries not to say any of this out loud. Rey’s smile cracks and fissures in static blue granules. Finn laughs, more than a little awkwardly.

“There’s something you’re not telling me,” Rey says.

Finn imagines the possibility of their futures bifurcating at a juncture. Rey longs for purpose.Rey wants the world, in all its abstractness. Finn has absolutely no idea what he wants. He makes an aborted attempt to tangle Rey's static blue fingers into his. Ahch-To orbits parsecs apart from D’Qar. He shrugs. Rey groans and rolls her eyes.

“If you won’t talk about it, would you like to bet how many pieces I can slice this fruit into, midair?” Rey asks.

 

* * *

During the last days of Finn’s recovery, the willow tree he frequents every morning has established itself as the equilibrium state balancing the metaphorical fulcrum of his mental composure. Well, the tree and its other resident frequenter. The daylight coruscates from the sun, to the water, to a sharply lit Poe-shaped silhouette, right by said tree. The silhouette turns its head and waves. Finn cannot help but feel a little stirred by the sight; but, only a little.

Insignificantly so.

This feels absurd. He feels absurd. The med droid hovering right behind Finn can probably sense the absurdity. The wind pushes forward from behind. Finn drags his crutch along and sits in the same spot, under the shade, flanking Poe’s left. After some difficulty, he sits.

“Something wrong?” Poe asks.

Everything is absolutely fine. The sun is shining, the weather is fair, the view is spectacular, and everything is fine. So what if, whenever Finn looks him in the eye, he cannot help but note the acute symmetry of Poe Dameron’s facial features? He’s definitely not thinking about the First Order’s fearful symmetries.

“No,” Finn says. It might be a lie.

Poe smiles at him, anyway. “How’s Rey?” He asks.

“She’s good, she’s good. The Force is… really something else,” Finn says. “She’s adjusting. She’s adjusting better than I’m adjusting.”

A belated realization dawns on Finn: he’s probably said too much. He tries not to fidget.

The pause is short, but the waiting feels all too excruciating.

“I’m going to tell you something I have never told anybody else before,” Poe says, quietly. He looks resolutely at Finn. “Some part of me is afraid of what my life will be like when the war is over.”

Finn doesn’t know whether to feel upset or confused.

Poe apologizes and continues. He talks about growing up raised with great expectations. He talks about dedicating decades of his life to following in the footsteps of the late Lieutenant Shara Bey, unparalleled hero, Resistance pilot, and the mother he never knew. He talks about knowing nothing of a life after the potential glory of revolution, of fighting for the sake of fighting the good fight. He talks about fearing the future.

Poe laughs. Well, he makes an attempt to laugh. “What I’m saying is, adjusting is difficult, Finn,” he says. “But you’re not alone.”

Finn tries to assess the best course of action. Next steps: one, thank Poe; two, hold his hand? No, that doesn’t sound right.

The water glimmers with borrowed light.The osiers fall silent, as if overcome. Under the sun, the world shows its wrinkles and wounds, old and new. Finn tries not to fix his gaze on the light dancing in Poe’s eyes.

And then, it rains.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finn anesthetizes his First Order terrors with a little help from nature. An exceptionally classy first class tour of D’Qar, for one recovering Big Deal, courtesy of Best Chauffer Ever, Poe Dameron.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. You might notice there's a bit of a gap between the previous chapter and the one you're about to read. That's because this, as well as subsequent chapters, were all originally written as isolated pieces. Thematically, they are all identical, hence the threading-together. (Loosely.) Otherwise, uh. Well…
> 
> 2\. Caveat viator: all of these chapters explore pretty much the same thing, again and again.

The day is sunny and serene, and the D’Qaren terrain is gloriously verdant. 

_Maybe?_

Finn can only imagine, from the streaks of diffused white on blue on green he catches every few seconds he manages to open his eyes and check the view from outside the perfectly safe, perfectly  _not-that-old_  refurbished T-40 Flitter that his esteemed chauffeur has picked out for him today. _Two seats, four wings, not too shabby, this pilot can drive anything_ —what could possibly go wrong?

Commander Poe Dameron, notable hotshot pilot, notable badass, notable show-off, pushes the vehicle into an aggressive and uncalled for rapid acceleration that leaves Finn, notable _Big Deal_ , snapping his eyes shut and missing a good quarter of his  _first class tour_  of the exceptionally green fringes of D’Qar.

This is officially Finn’s first day out of medical. He tries not to think about that. He may or may not be coming back just as soon as he left.

The T-40 lurches as it carves through a tree-lined path. The sound it makes can only be accurately described as  _ugly_.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Poe yells, over the gurgling blare of the perfectly  _not-that-old_  Flitter's perfectly  _fine_  motor. 

“What?” Finn says, managing to sound  _not at all nauseated, no really, this is all just fine._

_No. Nope. This is 100% not fine._

The vehicle careens lower, stopping just short of dipping into an overwhelmingly vast silver lake. Finn’s grip on his bucket seat tightens as he considers two very important, very relevant facts: one, he has helped destroy the Starkiller Base, notable deadly planet-cum-superweapon, meaning everything else that follows should be more than amenable; two, this alleged joyride is edging ridiculously close to winning the coveted title of _Finn’s Most Intense Time Ever_.

As the T-40  eases into a glide, Poe laughs in a manner Finn can only describe as genuinely the rudest laughter ever, in tone, in volume, in sheer undeniable audacity. Said rude laughter is steered into even ruder territory when Finn feels what is unmistakably supposed to be a reassuring grip on his shoulder.

“Hey,” Poe says, softly, calmly, in a way that manages to be infuriating, and not at all  _reassuring_. “Look outside.”

And Finn does look outside. He sees a brilliant sun blazing into vast blue sky, fuming down to foggy mountain peaks in the far horizon, sharpening into lush greens jutting up from the ground, to the whole view reflected with flawless symmetry right into the water below—a continuous waveform of flora, fauna, and fluid, peaks rising and falling as if to match the steadying beat of his heart.

It’s lovely. He could cry.

Poe looks at him with unambiguous concern. Finn turns to him and cracks a smile. The smile escalates to hysteria. Poe’s expression looks somewhere caught between confused and genuinely amused. 

From outside the T-40, the sound of their laughter is muffled by the somehow rhythmic, turbulent water below. 

“I’m sorry,” Poe says, in between laughs.

“You do that on purpose,” Finn snaps, allowing himself to sound bizarrely amused by the whole thing anyway.

“Eh, you love it anyway,” Poe says, unapologetically. Incorrectly, Finn might add. Absolutely not. _In any way._  

Poe smiles at him again, in that quiet, warm, sincerely delighted expression that Finn has filed in his head under: _faces that Poe Dameron makes when he’s actually worried._

Finn directs his gaze to the world outside.

He closes his eyes and remembers the stark synthetic sheen of the First Order. The clinical atmosphere. The cold, dry air. The regimented functions and its parallel structural geometries. He wonders whatever happened to the people he's left behind, and everybody he’s ever known. Faces blur intoimpressions of petals on a bough, positioned in code, in sequences.Multitudes in identical anonymity, converging into a single solid satellite. Everything and everyone slowly diffusing in a conflagration of sunlight, all replaced by the swell of breeze and wildlife.

He wonders if it should bother him that he hasn't felt sorry for all the others he’d left behind. The part of him that wants to feel sorry for everyone else always ends up feeling sorry for himself on the side, in paralytic dissonance.

He’s trying not to seem like that much of a sad sack, most days.

Finn thinks of Rey in her Jedi idyll far, far away. The sound of water dispersing into a gentle wake below. The notably decent driver reclined on the adjacent bucket seat, with the warm hands and the sorry smile, and the rude disposition. It’s all nice. _This must be what satisfaction feels like._

He takes a deep breath.

And so, when Finn turns to Poe and looks him squarely, considers Poe’s breeze-lifted hair and his winning grin, the red in his cheeks, the way his hand is still firmly clamped onto Finn’s shoulder, the tilt of his head and the suspect single eyebrow raised to coquettish effect, he  _really_  should have seen it coming.

Turbines flare and whir. The T-40 roars into transonic flow. Finn snaps his eyes shut.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A reformed stormtrooper and the Resistance's most daring pilot enter a bar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. This was originally written on Christmas day, 2015. I was going for something Christmasy.
> 
> 2\. It did not turn out as Christmasy as one would hope to expect.

A single, rather ghoulish red spotlight flickers ominously over a single squat amber bottle, a half-quarter full of deceptively clear, deceptively smooth, deceptively warm, deceptively innocuous-seeming liquid. A similarly squat, clear glass full of said deceptive liquid clicks against a low vinyl counter.

“Your turn,” says Poe Dameron, currently stretched in inebriated slump across a semicircle settee, slides said glass over to Finn’s side of the counter.

It’s Finn’s twentieth turn, to put it precisely. He takes a quick swig from the glass, and asks, “what was Yavin 4 like?”

He is trying his best to recall the past two hours. Two hours ago, when said liquid was not yet sloshing through his neural pathways and disintegrating all coherent thought into a dense vapor. When his perception of the visible spectrum was not something that needed to be called into question. He could have sworn those lights were yellow. Definitely.  _Yellow._   _So yellow_. The red lights are starting to get more than a little creepy.  _Why is the cantina empty? Is it late?_

_Drink this stuff_ , said Poe Dameron. _It’_ _s the best_ , said Poe Dameron.

Finn adds another row to the growing list of Reasons to Not Believe Any Claims Made by One Commander Poe Dameron.

Finn stretches his memory back to several hours earlier. To exactly thirteen hours after Finn’s official discharge from medical, exactly three hours after Finn had just finished scrubbing every surface of his newly-issued Resistance quarters within an inch of its life. Poe had come barging in without warning, took one sweeping edgewise glance at Finn’s spotless room, another sweeping top-to-bottom glance at a very shirtless Finn, and articulated an assessment with the parallel toss of a brand new sand-hued leather jacket onto a stretched-out coverlet, a slanted grin, and five words.

“Get dressed. We’re going out.”

They’re going out because life is short, and celebrations are a rarity. And, because it’s nothing short of a miracle that Finn survived a lightsaber laceration just millimeters away from his spine. Also, because one glance was all Poe needed to assess that Finn, formerly FN-2187—of the military-standard buzz cut and the ultra-pristine accommodations, of the lifetime’s worth of First Order conditioning, reconditioning, and re-reconditioning—was due for an education on every possible pleasure the free world has to offer.

Which is exactly how they ended up here, in one corner of a mostly-empty cantina, under the flickering glow of a dim red light, with Poe slurring his words as he regales Finn with the highly exaggerated exploits of one Poe Dameron, thirteen years of age.

Finn flips through his mental file of New Facts Learned About Poe Dameron. One, his childhood heroes was Wedge Antilles. ( _Finn superposes this on top of the shining images he’s conceived of the late Lieutenant Shara Bey and Sergeant Kes Dameron._ ) Two, he grew up in Yavin 4 surrounded by lush wildlife, and used to favor climbing to the top of hyperbolically enormous Force-sensitive tree planted by one Luke Skywalker. Three, he has had exactly two girlfriends and two boyfriends in the past, in alternating order of identity, and describes his type as  _attractive, intelligent, consenting human and of humanoid genus._  

Finn may or may not have deliberately steered the conversation to divergent segues for the express purpose of learning that final salient fact.

Or, maybe it was this drink. This drink, the one currently swirling his conscious mental functions into a veritable vortex of rose-tinted delirium. The one he’s finishing his twentieth glass of, right the hell now. The one directing Finn’s attention to the knee knocking into his thigh, the loosely sprawled arm along his back, the half-lidded eyes, the half-bitten lower lip. The drink tugging away at the disparate anchors of Finn’s thoughts, tracing every disjointed point into a single, sharp, determined vector. The vector translates into a hypothesis and, drink notwithstanding, the hypothesis seems sound. 

Poe finishes his story. He takes long drink, sets his glass down, and says, “My turn.”  He makes a show of giving a lot of effort into his inquiry. His gaze travels ceiling-ward. He licks the top of his lips. Finn waits. “What’s on your mind?“ 

Finn considers his options as he figures out how to proceed with some hypothesis-testing, as it were.

He’s seen some old holovids smuggled in by the previous troops. Personally, he’s never cared for the absurdity of the romantic ones. But, the fact is he’s seen them, and there were a lot of them. He’s seen how this is done. Somewhat.  _Romance is weird._ He can do this. _Step one, place your hands on the either side of someone’s face. Step two, look said someone straight in the eye. Step three, you… ask politely?_

He can do this. He can do this.

“May I… kiss you?” Finn asks in disjointed beats, sounding less like an amorous, confident, self-determining human being, and more like someone who has no idea what kissing even is. Which, fair point, he absolutely  _does not._

_"_ What?” Poe asks, trying not to look surprised. Utterly failing at trying not to look too surprised. Finn, for one, is surprised that he is surprised.

He classifies this evening: Full of Surprises.

“Uh, I asked you if—” Finn stutters out.

“Yeah, I heard it. Just checking.”

Poe stares him down, right in the eyes. He holds it right there for a while, in a manner of _just checking_. He moves his gaze to Finn’s hands, which start making their way up to cup either side of his face. He bites down his lower lip a little too slowly. Finn freezes, unsure. Then, Poe laughs.

“Hey,” Finn hisses. “I’m trying to take this seriously,” he says in a way that sounds latitudes off from serious.

“I know,” Poe answers, probably lying.

Poe drags his hands up to Finn’s chest, thumbs tracing at the contours of his new jacket. He moves closer. And closer. And closer.  

Along the edges of Finn’s mind, a TIE fighter takes flight.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An interlude. Or, cranial assault.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. The original plan was for this whole thing to have been comedic. The first two chapters are not, which in hindsight is making the rest of the installments feel jarring. Yes?
> 
> 2\. What I'm saying is, maybe let's all forget about consistency!

Finn would like to believe he is a morning person. In theory, he is. Most days, possibly, he'd be the morning person kind of guy. However, on this particular morning—with the sun shining brightly, shadows curling softly along the contours of a thoroughly creased coverlet, gloriously warm—he is adamantly not.

He wakes up in a foreign bed, feeling a foreign sensation in the back of his head and in the back of his eyes. The sunlight aligns perfectly with his retinas, and it stings. A sudden, unrelenting wave courses from his eyes to the back of his neck. He retches. He stops. He takes a deep breath. He angles his head and spots a metal bucket by the foreign bedside’s foreign floor, and notes the tall glass of water by the bedside table. He takes the bucket and heaves.

His head pivots, to recon. He notes the deconstructed X-Wing model parts strewn all over the counter of a two-tiered steel bureau, and the hardbound histories lined along the top. There's a string instrument by the corner he’s fifty-percent certain is called a guitar.  _He knows exactly whose room this is._ He looks down to check. He’s got clothes on. _Good sign._ That’s a good sign. 

The sound of a rough drag looms from outside. The door opens and BB-8 spins to the bedside. _Two BB-8s?_ His vision is blurry. Finn blinks. The droid beeps and blinks its signal light. Finn presses his thumbs down his temples.

His mind tries to trudge through the sludge of last night’s impressions to make sense of how the hell he ended up sleeping on someone else’s bed. Said someone else being Poe Dameron. Finn runs his hands through the coverlet. The bed is soft. The sunlight stings. BB-8 beeps and blinks.

The results from the neural cache are in: he has absolutely _no clue_  what happened last night.

Finn turns to BB-8. “You wouldn’t happen to know how I ended up here, would you?”

BB-8’s hemispheric head torques and clicks.  _You’ve got some explaining to do._

* * *

There’s a buzz dampening the intergalactic transmission. Holographic Rey makes a noncommittal holographic shrug. Finn can hear the sound of Chewie baying from behind. He can hear the ocean.

“Well, it’s the truth,” she yells back. “You can tell him that, yourself!”

Finn knows some Stormtroopers who would high-five her for calling Luke Skywalker an absolute basket case. Some of them might be more floating particulate matter, less living organic being. He tries not to think about that. He presses his fingers to his forehead. His eyes hurt. His head hurts. Everywhere hurts.

“I know, it’s hurting my head, too,” holographic Rey whines.

Finn does not want to consider the possibility that Rey might be reading his mind right now, from galaxies away. He should probably start aggregating all the salient facts he’d elected to valiantly ignore. It’s right there under the impression he’d gotten that training under the authority of the last known Jedi was something remarkable. Remarkably _bad_ , apparently.

“All right, I lied, I’m sorry!” Rey says, throwing her hands up, in response to a thought that Finn hadn’t actually vocalized. Or… had he? Maybe Rey actually can read his mind. Maybe Rey can reach into his thoughts as they air through the atmospheric network, right now. _This is horrifying_. Finn wants to speak, and possibly not retch while speaking. The wind from Rey’s isolated corner, in her isolated planet, along her isolated system, begins to hiss.

“Rey, I haven't actually said anything,” Finn says, weary.

“Well, you’re squinting at me right now like you _knew_ anyway,” Rey retorts, a little despairingly, holographic hands still held aloft.

Finn wishes he had a better answer, but the embarrassing fact is, “my eyes are like this because I drank something last night. I think it’s toxic.”

“Oh.” Rey’s holographic eyes grow positively wide.

“Don’t panic!” Finn half yells, _not_  panicking. A wave of pain surges from his eyes to his head. He recoils. His head is down, his eyes are straining. Rey’s eyes grow even wider. She reaches out.

“You should go to medical,” Rey says, her holographic hand passing through Finn’s head as it pats him gently, in a sorry attempt at commiseration. 

“Thanks, but I’m totally fine,” Finn says, hands on his knees, sounding a lot like the obverse. He exhales. _Totally fine._

Rey’s holographic hand continues to pass through Finn’s head. “I wanted to make things seem better than they actually were,” she says, quietly. She laughs, aggrieved. “It’s like I’m back in Jakku all over again.”

Finn breathes deeply. He gets that. In the weeks since he’d woken up in medical, bound up, all caustic pain and paraparesis, his mind’s been doing its ostensible best to anesthetize. He takes in the vistas and designates unsolicited metaphors. Most times, a tree is just a tree, Force-sensitive or otherwise.

He wonders about what thoughts Rey tries to drown out when she stares into the ocean. 

* * *

When he weaves past the halls back to his quarters, he finds Poe leaning against the unlocked doorway, arms folded in a rather awkward fashion, an orange flask hooked in one hand. Finn considers running right to him and shaking him for answers. He would if his head didn’t hurt so much. His brain shuffles through an index of inquiries in need of immediate resolution.  _What was in that drink? Why did I wake up in your bed? Why does everyone keep looking at me like I’m hopeless? Was BB-8 mocking me this morning? Am I going crazy?_

Playing it cool, he decides, is the best course of action.

“Uh,” Finn says, sounding uncool. 

“You look like shit, buddy,” Poe says. “Where were you?”

“I feel like shit. I had an appointment with Rey. It was nice. She says Luke Skywalker is a lunatic. Chewie agrees. I think I agree. Where were you?” Finn says with zero breaks, managing to ramp up the vibe to moderately cool.

“Weekly briefing,” Poe says, truthfully. “The General asked about you.”

“Uh-huh,” Finn says, still in the relative median cool. He presses two fingers to the bridge of his nose.

Poe’s mouth stretches like it’s caught between laughing and frowning. He holds out the flask to Finn. “Please drink this. Please. Have all of it.”

Finn takes the flask, unscrews the cap, and drinks, and drinks. It’s an isotonic drink he thinks he should rather not be familiar with. Looks like the Resistance and the First Order intersect with regards to some transactions. _If you’ve got the credits_ , he supposes. An unassuming blue isotonic drink should not be making him feel simultaneously relieved and angry. This is unsettling. He _might_ be going crazy.

Finn hands the flask back and cuts to the chase. “What happened last night?”

“I took you out to the spaceport tavern. We had some drinks. You passed out. I took you back to my quarters so you wouldn’t gag all over your floor,” Poe answers, immediately, thoroughly suave.

“Ah,” Finn says. _Ah_ meaning, _I am one-hundred-percent sure you’ve left out some very important stuff_. 

“We kissed. And then you passed out,” Poe adds, a hand sheepishly scratching the back of his head. “I felt kind of insulted, at first.”

Ah. _That_  happened.

“Oh,” Finn says, last night’s events finally rising to the very fore of his consciousness, abruptly, all at once, in an overwhelming, confusing, frustrating, and slightly arousing blend. His eyes, unbidden, cannot seem to look away from Poe’s lips. “Well…” he tries. He opens his mouth and tries again. 

Poe’s gaze darts from the sides of the open hall, to the ground, to Finn’s eyes, to his lips. He moves closer and whispers right next to Finn’s ear, “maybe, when you’re up to it, we can pick up where we left off?” 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A strange wordless gesture and even stranger method of reparation.

Finn’s new life is marked by discoveries.

Some days, they take the shape of prospects ascribed to something physical yet wholly unfathomable. The sound of the ocean as it tumbles from across the cosmos through crackling stereo. The resolute anchor of a towering willow. A stretch of greenery helplessly seen through the frame of a speeding transport. The taste of a smooth, warm, intoxicating substance. The inexhaustible pour of the atmosphere, seen from atop the branches of a tree. The strange pull of the Force, whatever that is. Everything converging and collapsing into a single, determined direction. It has been precisely one week since he’d surrendered his crutch and took the hand of a wayward driver. The crutch is gone and, along with it, the desire to disappear into the farthest fringes of space.

Other days, the discoveries are a little more hands-on.

The sound of a soaring melodic sequence fills the compact quarters currently occupied by one Poe Dameron and one Finn, formerly FN-2187. The steady monophonic sound is something that Finn _might_  interpret, were he so inclined, as weirdly sweet. However, at this very moment, there’s something about it that he finds ever so slightly frustrating.

“Something on your mind?” Poe asks, from a corner, fingers relaxing as he pauses in the middle of plucking out a complex melody on his worn wooden mandolin.

“Uh, not really,” Finn says, looking back at the text he’s resolved to read all afternoon. He swipes two fingers up the lit screen to pronounce the progress he’s making. The music is _not_  distracting him. _Not at all_.

Poe repositions his fingers back on the neck of the mandolin and resumes his halted performance of a swift lilting progression. The flowing tones in escalating cadence move higher and airier, in a way that _should_ sound relaxing. It is getting on Finn's nerves. It’s getting on his nerves because this is the first time he is hearing it and yet, it definitely feels like he’s heard it before. _Somehow._ He’s straining for a single trace of an exasperatingly diaphanous, possibly imagined memory.

The melody continues. He’s sure he knows it. It sounds clear and light and beautiful. _It’s the worst._

Finn sets the text panel aside, sits up straight, and says, “you know, it’s weird, this kind of sound isn’t the First Order’s style, but I think I’ve heard this one before.”

Immediately, Poe stops playing. He smiles, shakes his head, rises up, sets the mandolin by the wall, walks back, and reclines on his chair. Finn tries to not pay too much attention to the fact that, throughout the strangely silent sequence of actions, Poe might have been going slightly red, in the face. Only slightly. Maybe more. Embarrassment looks endearing on Poe, Finn thinks.

Poe smiles again. “Yeah I was kind of playing it at you.” he says, running a hand through his lightly tousled hair. “When you were unconscious, I mean.”

Finn points at the mandolin and asks, “they let you bring that thing into medical?”

“Not really,” Poe says, with a grin that’s just a little bit on the coquettish side of the recognizable spectrum of Poe Dameron: Unusual Expressions that Finn keep a log of, in the back of his mind.

Musical weirdness culprit: Poe Dameron, in the occupied Resistance medical ward, with the crappy wooden mandolin. So, that solves _that_. Mystery over. Finn picks the text panel back up. The screen brightens. He blinks and sets it down again.

“What were you reading, anyway?” Poe asks.

“Nothing interesting,” Finn answers quickly, shrugging his shoulders. He wouldn’t file interplanetary naturalism under nothing interesting, but right now he’s interested in another, more specific inquiry.

Finn gets up, then sits down. He opens his mouth to speak, hesitates, clicks his teeth, and tries again. Poe leans back in his chair, folding his arms across his chest, raising a single eyebrow, and smiling a lopsided smile. There is absolutely no way he does not know exactly what is up.

Finn decides to cut to the chase, walking over to Poe with the unambiguous intention of making a grand demonstration of  _exactly_  what it is that is on his mind. “Last week you said something about picking up where we left off,” he says, smoothly.

* * *

Finn’s new life is marked by discoveries.

Discoveries like the way a kiss feels exactly like testing out a brand new transport. The revving of the engine, the spinning of gear, after gear, after gear, the chassis stirring and vibrating as it transitions into a glide. The force of friction, the force of resistance. The laminar drag punctuated by a thermal rise. There’s a slow slide down his back, a sharp press all over his skin, lips dotting his body, region by region, like the charting of a course to a southern destination. In his mind and throughout his body, the feel of a spinning coin, the warmth of a gold sun about the whitened sky.   

Discoveries like the crash of bodies, the crash of a ship to foreign shores, rising from up from the ruins, aching to exploring new territory. The unrelenting atmospheric pressure, the foreign sun and its foreign heat, the upward climb and downward slide through towering dunes and shifting ripples. The long, slow, arduous odyssey for a single drop of water.

The windows are shut. The room is dark. A jacket is peeled off and tossed aside. A zipper is hastily unzipped. Multiple concurrent tangles culminate into multiple concurrent snapping at junctions. Somebody tackles somebody onto a corner, onto an immaculately crisp bed. A sheet falls to the floor. Clothes fall to the floor, one by one. His skin is warm. The room is hot. The air is burning.

Everything is new. His new name called out, again and again, in obscenely heavy breaths, sounds new. The tongue slowly skimming the inner contours of his mouth tastes new. The fingers pressing down his chest, dragging its way to a lower, unbearably sensitive pressure point, feels new. Every sensation somehow feels like the simultaneous intimacy of an isolated monophonic melody and the swelling grandeur of a convergent, polyphonic symphony. The pressure of a coiled spring, leaping, outflung into a parabola in space, right into the incandescent core of a radiating star, into gravitational collapse, into a veritable supernova, into an unconscionable vortex of volatile star-stuff. Waves of something sublimely overwhelming, like a practical inquisition into the very nature of the Force. That’s probably _not_ how the Force even works, but that’s how he imagines it could work like—vast, inexplicable, compelling, and grand.

Finn's new life is strange. But some days, a new kind of light shines its way through the cracks and the creases, through golden sun, through blue holographic static transmissions, through vastly green terrain, through its increasingly odd inhabitants with their strangely intimate gestures and their even stranger reparation routines for salvaging the worn-out whole and shaping it into something bright and promising in the best ways it can possibly be, pulling it further and further out from the uncompromising shadow of a life that was once his, to galaxies far, far away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. In a previous chapter, Finn identified the musical instrument in Poe's room as a guitar. After some research, I found out that the closest guitar-like instrument in the Star Wars universe is, actually, a mandolin. So, Poe plays a mandolin, and you can chalk the error up to Finn having no idea what the hell the instrument was, in the first place.
> 
> 2\. Poe plays the mandolin/guitar because Oscar Isaac does, and because I have no imagination when it comes to romantic leisure activities suitable for compact living spaces.


End file.
